THE ALCINE PEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WOELDS. 51 



mammotli bones, could now exist in that icy wilderness. 

 On these grounds a high antiquity is claimed for the 

 sub-genus Alces, probably as great as that of the rein- 

 deer. 



As a British fossil mammal, the true elk has not yet 

 been described, though for a long time the remains of 

 the now well-defined sub-o-enus Mes^aceros were ascribed 

 to the former animal. There is a statement, however, in 

 a recent volume of the " Zoologist " to the effect that the 

 painting of a deer's head and horns, which were dug out 

 of a marl pit in Forfarshire, and presented to the Koyal 

 Society of Edinburgh, is referable to neither the fallow, 

 red, nor extinct Irish deer, but to the elk, which may be 

 therefore regarded as having once inhabited Scotland. 

 The only recorded instance of its occurrence in England 

 is the discovery, a few years since, of a single horn at the 

 bottom of a bog on the Tyne. It was found lying on, 

 not in, the drift, and therefore can be only regarded as 

 recent. 



Passing on to prehistoric times, when the remains of 

 the species found in connexion Avith human implements 

 prove its subserviency as an article of food to the hunters 

 of old, we find the bones of Cervus Alces in the Swiss 

 lake dwellings, and the refuse-heaps of that age ; whilst 

 in a recent work on travel in Palestine by the Kev. H. 

 B. Tristram, Ave have evidence of the great and ancient 

 fauna which then overspread temperate Europe and Asia 

 having had a yet more southerly extension, for he dis- 

 covers a limestone cavern in the Lebanon, near Bcyrout, 

 containing a breccious deposit teeming with the debris of 

 the feasts of prehistoric man — flint chippings, evidently 

 used as knives, mixed with bones in fragments and teeth, 



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